(upbeat electronic music plays)
- It is time for another Beat the Chef
mystery box challenge.
And this time we have our normal home cook, Mike
up against Chef Ben.
We're giving Mike 35 minutes and Ben, 25.
Jamie will be coming in at the end to do what he does best
which is eat, judge, and pick a winner.
Right. Let's see what you are working with.
- Okay, I'm worried.
Oh, I'm really worried.
- [Ben] Ooh!
- Leek-y, onion-y things.
- Some cauliflower, mussels.
Love that this time of year.
I'm gonna say some form of poultry or fowl.
- We've got some apples,
some sort of prehistoric sea creature.
- Standard bits.
Pancetta, halloumi, kind of universal.
Ooh, a pomegranate
- Mushrooms, a tomato
- Passion fruit.
And quintessential: bay leaves
- The fish in front of you.
Caught in Cornwall, to give you a little bit of a clue.
Any idea to what type of fish it is?
- No idea.
I can't cook fish.
Especially not that thing.
- [Ben] It's not gurnard, is it? Gurnard?
- Ah. This could be anything.
It's red meat?
- Possibly pheasant.
- Now you've seen it all, how are you feeling?
- Concerned. Man, I'm in trouble.
- Get ready, cause your time is about to start.
(upbeat music plays)
Your 35 minutes starts... now!
(train whistle blows)
- Okay, so first thing I'm going to do is
try and get some potatoes going.
I know that's so boring and I'm very aware
that I've got to make this,
in terms of how I plate it,
look like a chef, so essentially I can con Jamie.
- So first thing you're doing with the potato
is not peeling it.
- I'm not gonna peel it.
I haven't got time.
I'm gonna parboil them
and I think I'm going to finish them off in a frying pan
with some butter.
I have this meaty thing which looks like sunburnt chicken.
Is it fowl-y?
Is it something like guinea fowl?
It's something weird like guinea fowl isn't it?
Oh, I don't have time to think.
- You're right. It's game season.
So what types of animals are hunted
at this time of the year?
Is it pheasant?
- Straight away, mate.
- Oh no! Pheasant.
Oh dear.
Pheasant cooked by a peasant. Great.
- Chef Ben.
Your 25 minutes starts now.
- That's not long.
The only kind of carb option on the table is one potato.
But I thought I might make some quick flatbreads
because then the pomegranate
has kind of given me a direction of flavour,
which I'm gonna use the staples cupboard.
They are a vehicle for any and everything
for the rest of the year.
A little bit of bicarb mixed in with the flour
and then yoghourt.
And if you do it correctly it should be about two to one
- Two to one
- If my memory serves me correctly.
Yoghourt gives you a nice little bit of acidity,
which reacts with the bicarb you've just put in,
which is alkaline,
which gives you a nice little instant rise
once you've kneaded it.
The machines can do that work
while I make a whole bunch of things
for the bread to sit alongside.
- I'm gonna season the pheasant.
I don't know what that's gonna taste like.
I'm gonna get that frying off
on a high heat to get some colour
and I assume that that's gonna take about 15 minutes.
The fruit is really stitching me up.
Could I like stew some apples?
Let's just chop stuff.
I need to chop stuff.
So let's cube some apples.
- Ooh, give it apples.
Okay, apple and pheasant.
- Yeah, I'm thinking like maybe a tomato, apple
and pheasant with some shallots.
- Tomato and apple?
- Is it tomato in season?
Ah, not in the UK.
There's Spanish winter tomatoes
which I didn't realise was a thing either.
I'm happy with the colour on that side
so I'm gonna turn that down now
cause that is on a high heat.
I really need these potatoes to start doing something.
- So I'm just gonna cut through the thickest stems.
And I think personally for brassica,
unless you are pureeing them,
they are better without too much added liquid.
So roasted is better.
But I want to kind of
cut them all at a similar sort of size
and keep their their length, their shape.
Cause that's what is kind of unique
about this particular vegetable.
- So I've noticed as well you've hidden the gurnard
and the mussels.
- Yeah, I absolutely love mussels,
but I fear that I've gotta remember who I'm cooking for.
We did a mystery box not long ago,
I cooked a dish and it was judged by people
who prefer different things
and therefore this time
I'm playing to Jamie.
- So it's such a polite way of saying--
- I played too much
to what I wanted to do and not to the audience.
- He's still bitter about that loss
and I think fair enough
cause it was an outstanding performance from Ben.
So now you're moving on to your leek-y looking things.
- Do you know what?
The allium family get a bad rap.
We might talk about different types of apple
and different types of orange:
we've got blood oranges and satsumas
and clementines and stuff.
But when you just say onion, you just say onion.
The only exception to that
is the Roscoff onion that we've celebrated before.
Which onion is this?
- These are Spanish onions,
if it gives you a clue at all,
known as calçots onions
- I don't think I've necessarily specifically
cooked with them,
but here what I'm gonna do is a fricassee
of this onion with mushroom
and some other bits and pieces
to form a kind of like a warm roasted salad.
- What would you say if we ran a competition
where you and a friend
could come down to our Central London studio
and watch us film an episode of Sorted Food live?
Plus you'll get lunch cooked by Kush
and get to eat it with assorted crew.
Sound good?
All you've got to do is--
- cook just three meals from our Sidekick App
and send us a photo
whilst everyone around you
wonders how you became a chef overnight.
And cook along with us
live in our home kitchens every week.
You can ask Ben all your chef-y questions
and let's level up our cooking together.
(electric guitar riffs)
- What are you doing?
(ice cracks)
- Right. So, what I'm thinking with the tomato
is that I'm going to blanch it,
and then peel it.
- Ooh, chef-y!
- Make it look like a chef did it.
So I'm cubing apple,
I'm thinking I might stew that in some butter
with some shallots and have like a tomato-y broccoli salad.
Whoa, apple pie.
Tomato pies.
- What are you saying?
Tomato apple pie?
- I'm not making a pie,
but like those flavours go together right?
So if I can do like a tomato and apple salad,
the tomato flavour and the sweetness of the apple
- Sure.
- might go together?
- I don't think I've ever experienced
apple and tomato on the same plate.
- We're about to find out whether that works or not.
- I like it.
- Typical Mike,
I've got all the pans on the go.
Boiling water, tomato just goes in?
Tomato is in.
- Little bit of smoked pancetta.
We're gonna render out the fat from that
and add that to the pigeon.
So you've got that kind of meaty, smoky gamey flavour.
That is gonna be on top of a very casually tossed salad
of some roasted veggies, fresh parsley,
and then some fruity top.
- We're five minutes in,
and you haven't started using your pheasant yet.
- The thing with pheasant, and so much game poultry,
it can be a little on the under side, like duck,
but although they are breast shaped,
they are very, very thin.
So it won't take much cooking, but resting will be key.
- I'm gonna take those out.
In the meantime,
let's get a little bit more oil in the pan.
I wanna brown that butter
and then I'm gonna put my shallots in brown butter,
skin side down.
- Ooh. Okay.
- Do I wanna stew the apple?
Are we gonna stew the apple?
Yeah, we are.
I'm hoping that that will
bring the sweetness to the acidity of my tomato.
I have no idea where this dish is going, Baz,
you can probably tell.
So I am frying them off for a bit of crispiness.
- Tell you what will go well with that. Bacon.
- Yeah, that's a great idea.
All that porky fat is going to go into my potatoes now.
Let's have a look at these shallots.
Yep. Brown butter shallots.
Or, in this case maybe burnt butter shallot.
(Barry laughs)
Okay, so the tomato's out
and it's going into cold water
and I'm hoping it seizes up
and then I'm able to peel it
(upbeat electric guitar riff begins)
- Into our smoked pancetta fat.
We're going with typical spices you might associate
with North Africa.
And when I first saw that meat
I thought it could have been pigeon
and my head instantly went to like a pastier
with a little bit of cinnamon,
which is a really key flavour.
And then we realised it was pheasant.
But actually I feel like the meat would work
in a very similar way.
Into all of that spiced fat go our pheasant breasts.
And we'll only need about 90 seconds
on each side in this hot pan.
Throw in a bit of butter to mix
with the pancetta, and then combine.
Beautiful spice and flavouring.
(guitar riff continues)
- Nah, they need, they need a lot longer.
- So they're called sweet stemmed cauliflower.
Oh, they're delicious.
There's something in this seasonal cooking.
Got some flavour on my caramelised apple.
So let's get that onto a plate as well.
Let's taste those to see if they're usable.
I'm really happy with those.
Tomato time!
I should have done this beforehand,
but I'm scoring the bottom,
and then I'm gonna try and peel it.
To make it look chef-y.
Oh, it's not as pretty when you peel the skin back.
Just like my personality.
Oh, I'm too shaky to peel this.
So what's your plan with it after it's been peeled?
I'm gonna season it with sea salt because we know
that sea salt brings out all the lovely umami flavour.
It's a bit mushy.
So that's going onto my plate of stuff
that I'll figure out what to do with later.
- Flatbreads. Very simple.
Not at all yeasted.
So it's literally just got the baking soda
and the self raising flour.
On a nice floured surface,
in a really hot dry pan,
cause I want lots of colour on it.
And then we will probably rub it
in some of that spiced pancetta.
- Yes
- Oil afterwards, like you would ghee
after you've cooked an naan bread.
It's kind of similar.
A mixture of seeds going onto the bread
and into the pan.
Dry pan, but really hot.
- And you have 10 minutes left.
- Right. Pheasant done.
Look at that spicing.
That's just gonna rest.
- Barry, we're gonna blag a pan sauce.
- I like it.
- I've just got some stuff from the store cupboard.
- Oh, wonderful. Magical, magical Bisto.
I don't know how to do this.
So red wine and butter, and I'm gonna reduce it.
I'm gonna use instant gravy into red wine to thicken it.
And then I might add some mustard.
We've got some Dijon mustard in the store cupboard,
but it's gone thick.
It's gone thick quick.
- Wow!
- Let's get some more water in that.
- You got yourself an instant jus.
- Okay, I've got something.
I really hope this is cooked.
(record scratches)
It's not cooked!
Oh, that's so nearly cooked,
but I can throw that pan side down,
or maybe warm it in the oven?
Shall I warm it in the oven?
- I'll turn this on for you.
- Thanks mate.
- At the moment, it's all quite rich.
We've got this butter and smoke and meat.
We've got kind of roasted vegetables.
We're gonna have buttered bread.
So this is gonna be the base of our dressing,
and we'll hopefully bring it back.
- Is that a smoky pan over there? Are those you--
- Yeah, I'm doing a good char on it.
We've quite a smoky pan over here,
Baz, I'm just gonna flip it.
- Told you!
- There we go. Beautiful.
- Damn, it's perfect.
- I've worked these challenges out now.
Jamie's eating it.
It's play to Jamie's tongue.
Pomegranates, people think of as really difficult fruit.
If you're just gonna eat them like with a cocktail stick
and pick seed by seed, then it's quite fiddly.
Alternatively, we've done it many times here,
you can cut right through the half
and just whack, whack the seeds out
into a bowl of water and all the pithy bits go.
But when you realise a pomegranate's segmented,
you can literally take one segment out
and just do it that way,
which is what I've done today.
And again, that flatbread took literally 15 minutes to do.
And we've got enough dough,
we could easily make three more of those.
We probably will cause we've got the dough made.
But for this dish, I just need the one.
Using the hot pan, the residual heat,
we've used our bread.
I'm just going to toast off a few almonds,
and let's think about a dressing.
- It's not very nice at all.
It doesn't taste of red wine, it doesn't taste of anything.
It tastes of gravy.
- Five minutes left, mate.
- Five minutes.
I'm really worried about this.
Let's get, we're just gonna have to blag this
and try and fix it.
Got some mustard going in.
- Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
Bit at a time.
You can add more, you can't take it away.
- I've got some, oh, what do I do with that?
I'm just gonna squeeze some orange juice into it.
- Yeah, sweetness.
- Yeah.
- Pheasant a l'orange.
It's your favourite, Mike.
- I know, what have I done?
I've just made pheasant a l'orange.
Let's get a bay leaf in, obviously, for flavour.
- The acid is in the form of lemon,
which also gives you the citrus
and is also wonderful this time of year. Oil.
We've already seasoned all the veg.
When you cook midweek,
don't make life more difficult for yourself.
Use what you have.
So this is where I'm gonna mix our warm salad.
- Pheasant's going in.
- Oh, you're committed to the sauce.
(Barry laughs)
- I'm just gonna do what I can have control over:
butter and pheasant.
How long I got, Baz?
- Two minutes left.
Two minutes. Two minutes. Two minutes.
(upbeat brass-led music plays)
It's very tangy.
- It might work.
- It needs some sweetness that's not citrus.
Is this sugar?
- Mm, yep. No! No, salt.
- It is salt.
I found some maple syrup.
(Barry laughs)
- Okay, interesting.
- Very interesting.
- Interesting.
There's a lot of ingredients in this red wine jus.
- Pomegranate acting as a garnish.
As are these toasted almonds.
- Little bit of sweetness,
just to play off the lemon
and the spicing and the smokiness.
The only mistake I might have made here
is cooking Jamie a salad.
(Barry laughs)
(intense violin music begins)
- But do you know what? It's getting there.
- Oh yes.
90 seconds.
Oh dear. Baz, can I just get your opinion?
Can you come and taste this?
- Well, what? No time!
- I need help.
- I quite like that.
- You can see it's just steamy and golden
but just on the edge there.
(violin music intensifies)
- I'm getting sweaty.
- One minute remaining!
Why are you picking the smallest little pot?
I don't know!
What's the pot for?
Why did you do that?
- I don't know.
On the plate. On the plate.
- Oh, do the zhuzh!
- Pardon?
- Over the top or on the bottom?
Where's the sauce going?
- Over the top.
- Oh, I thought, the sauce at the bottom,
I would've thought.
- Really? - Looks more chef-y.
- Oh, fine.
- Okay, then. Potatoes.
- Yeah, nice, now it's chef-y
- Tomatoes.
- Some of our smoky spiciness, some of our fruitiness,
some of our toastiness, some of our freshness.
- 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.
Step away from your dish.
You got a bit of gravy on your forehead, mate.
(Barry laughs)
Let's get that into the sexies.
(satisfying instrumental music begins)
- If you are enjoying this, there are some small
things you can do that make a big difference to us.
Like the video. Subscribe, if you aren't.
Click the notification bell and select "all."
Thanks.
- Welcome, Jamie.
Now, as our reigning champion of this battle,
we thought it was only right for you to be here,
judging this one.
- You know, I'm glad to be back.
And actually, having had that experience of winning,
I think it does set me up in a really good place
to be able to judge evenly
what good food should taste like.
(Barry laughs)
- He obviously hasn't read the comments under the last one.
- He's just bitter.
Almost as bitter as his bergamot. Right.
- Okay, so Jamie, please reveal:
what's under cloche A?
This is pheasant with red wine jus,
sauteed potatoes,
apple and tomato salad.
And, cloches B,
(Barry laughs)
a warm spiced pheasant salad with charred flat breads.
- Instant reactions:
they're both very well plated
and beautiful looking plates of food.
Ooh.
- What'd you get?
A potato or an apple?
- An apple.
This jus.
It's very, very lovely.
That red wine jus is the best thing on the plate.
The tomatoes surprise me.
- Why is that?
- I'm not a hundred percent sure it belongs on the plate
in my personal opinion.
And it does provide some acidity,
but it's quite sweet and wet.
The spicing on that is superb.
I'm liking the pop of the pomegranate.
That is very nice.
That is a very nice fresh element to what, again,
is a very rich but well spiced dish.
- I will say pomegranates on the plate are a bit of a cliche
towards what a chef would do.
- Or someone who thinks they're trying to cook like a chef.
The old pomegranate double bluff.
- Classic.
- There's a lot more elements to this dish
which I think makes it lean one way or the other.
And I can't decide which way it leans.
There is a lot going on there, which could have been done
with the extra time that Mike had,
or it could have been done
with the extra skill that Ben had.
(drum roll begins)
I think this plate was cooked by Michael Brian Huttlestone
and therefore this one was cooked by Benjamin David Ebbrell.
And my favourite plate is this one.
- Interesting.
Well, we can reveal that that plate was made by Chef Ben.
(Barry, Mike, and Ben clap)
- Those two plates. I made your flatbreads as well.
- Justice, I think is the word you're looking for.
- Boys, come in and eat it.
- Ah, let's try some of this.
- Ben's back in the game.
It's normals one, chef one,
but what do you guys think?
Let us know down below.
And next time, my turn.
- Still riding on you mate.
- Decider.
- Bring the win in.
- Do it for the normals.
- You're in safe hands.
- Oh no.
(Barry laughs)
Oh no!